Poetry, Art, Medicine & Society

Remedy

After fourteen years of downsized widowhood,
An efficiency’s garden view, and if he bent
To the kitchen’s greasy window, smokestacks
Over trees and then the light-struck river,
Which from this distance never appeared
To move, the current small creases like worn flesh,
He thought it would only take a little air
On the street, a change of scenery
To fix the ache, his good left arm discreet,
A silent counselor at his shoulder
With a determined pinch, a signal
For which he strangely lacked the strength to respond
That he understood. So he sought to predict
And thus accommodate its return
As with the neighbor he’d never met
Beyond a curt how are you, her perfect
Disapproving face, on which he’d focused
So she wouldn’t think he’d dare eye any
Other part of her, now floating over his
As she loosened his shirt. If only he’d considered
Earlier lying on concrete. The cars brushing past
Slowed on reflex as if their wheels had sunk
Into dirt, all traffic could do in homage
Like the anonymous though pleasant dusk,
The peering passengers close enough to touch
While right there a crowd bloomed around him
As in the park or a sermon, waiting
For someone to hug the accordion
Or make lesions vanish from a leper’s back,
Show them what came next. As for his flawed heart,
The attack was final, defied nitroglycerin
Then the paramedic’s brusque cajoling
But was itself a tonic for everything else.

—David Moolten

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David Moolten

About me: I'm the author of three books of poetry, Plums & Ashes (Northeastern University, 1994), which won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, Especially Then (David Robert Books, 2005), and Primitive Mood, which won the 2009 T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press, and was published in 2009.

I'm also a physician specializing in transfusion medicine, and I live, write and practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Audio Files

'Cuda(Originally appeared in The Kenyon Review)

Ode For Orville And Wilbur Wright(Originally appeared in The Southern Review)

Ode For Orville And Wilbur Wright

I don't yearn for their steep excursion
Into fame and fortune, for it had
The usual price, and Orville died bitter
And Wilbur died young. I envy them
Only the slender and empty distance they left
Between them and a seaside's grassy bluffs
In mild December, the frail ingenuity
Of dreams, a lifetime's hopes made of string and cloth
And a little puttering motor that might have run
A lawn mower if the brothers had put their minds
To one first. For dumb exhilaration, nothing --
Not an F-16 thundering from its base
In Turkey nor my redeye circling O'Hare --
Comes close to what they must have felt
For less than a shaking, clattering minute
Clearing all attachment to the world
Of dickering and petty concerns: for some
No other heaven. So I take note of them
As they took notes from the lonely buzzard, obsessed
To the point of love with the ghostly air
And the small fluttering things that wandered
Through it. Eccentric but never flighty,
Bookish but not above nicking their hands
In bicycle shops and basements, they lived
With their sister and tinkered with the future.
Propelled by ambition, the mandate
It invents, they still heeded the laws
Of nature, trimmed needless weight, saw everything
Even themselves as burden, determined
Not to crash and burn. Sheer will launched them,
Good will, because those first forty yards
Skimming shale and reeds were for everyone.
Face down between the struts, staring at the ground
As it blurred past, they failed like anyone
To grasp the implications. But legs flailing
They hung on, buoyed by never and almost
And then just barely. I could do worse
Than their brief rapture, their common sense
Of purpose. Or I could, if only
For a moment, exalt them, go along
With the jury-rigged myth, the quaint
Contrivance that lets them rise above it all.

Russell Teagarden is an Editor of the NYU Literature Arts and Medicine Database and helped lead the Medical Humanities elective at the School of Medicine this past winter. In this blog post, he experiments with creating a text collage from recent reviews of George Saunders novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. […]

Howard Trachtman, MD Department of Pediatrics NYU School of Medicine Throughout history, reading books has often been viewed with deep suspicion by figures in authority. The Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola collected and publically burned thousands of objects including books on February 7, 1497 in Florence, Italy, an infamous episode that […]

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Good golly Miss Molly, makes me want to quite dancing. You have touched a nerve of humanity – gratification at the expense of one’s physical detritus, and we all have much. I keeping sweeping mine under the rug of existing, now you have made me come face to face with the mound of debris I have gathered. David, the poem was great, thanks.
DH

This poem highlights the alienation and loneliness of many in society…not knowing neighbours,disapproving looks of winners to losers. In my reality Miss not so nice neighbour wouldn’t have loosened his shirt,she would have stepped over him and pretended she hadn’t noticed.Your lot must be nicer than ours. Accordion hugs and crowds blooming are evocative images.Good poem but I’m deducting 5 points for not using the words!

A poem which bears witness to the last moments of a common man’s life, delivered through an omniscient voice both compassionate and dispassionate — a voice informed by the poet’s own career in medicine (“med” related to “remedy”). The poem is almost phenomenological, rarefied by its many delicate grace notes. With “the beauty of innuendo,” this poem asks questions which it does not answer for certain: can we predict when the moment of our death will arrive? can death be a welcome remedy for the loneliness of life? can a poet imagine the first moment after death, or only the last moment before death? Very beautiful poem.

David….your certainly “wimped”out….using JUST one word…..this is great……I wish I could wimp out more…use your remedy….and use just one word…..less is more or something……seems I always “think” I have to meet the CHALLENGE…and use all the words…when the real challenge for me is to use just one of the words…..thanks for sharing….and a lesson

I was so into the sense of loneliness and alienation I never noticed whether you had used any of the “Wordle” words or not. I thought your phrases were very expressive and the situation so real. Thank you for reminding me to look in on my elderly neighbors.

Visions of loneliness and obscurity… like an human being invisible in society. It’s brilliant the way you have described each detail and put across each emotion. Loved the line- the current small creases like worn flesh- so much meaning, especially in the context of this piece. Absolutely heart-wrenching piece. Thank you.

Thanks so much. Yes, focusing on one word can sometimes be easier, at least for me. I tend to need to imagine narrative situations for my poems versus scenes or in addition to them. In that kind of poem, trying to get all the words in can seem forced, at least in my hands.

Such wonderful observations! You have such a skill for rendering detail, as in “As with the neighbor he’d never met
Beyond a curt how are you, her perfect
Disapproving face, on which he’d focused
So she wouldn’t think he’d dare eye any
Other part of her.”
Fantastic!

Thank you Nathan. I tend to think visually. If I can “see” the action in my head, things usually turn out better than if I can’t. My writer’s block usually consists of mental blindness rather than muteness…

I’m a week late getting over here (my fussy dial-connection calls for a slower pace) but it’s worth it. What a gem! I love the precise details that bring this character’s life into focus in its final moments. You say so much with so few carefully chosen words.